The ATM usage charges are introduced indiscriminately to harass the millions of common people of this country at this modern age of cost effective technology and services. We, common people (Aam Aadmi) of this country are fed up of the
treatment meted out to all of us by various organizations/ institutions like banks?!
Going to such kind of places seems to be a herculean task
for the common man as they lose a day's wages for no constructive purpose. More
over, many a times, we are sent back with yet another list of things to be
fulfilled before actually receiving the service from these institutions. The
funniest part of this ATM story is that when RBI came up with strict security
norms, the first bank to protest and suggest such a charge was not any private
or multinational banks, instead it was SBI group of banks who did that??!! For
the service they offer to their customers, it was always relieving for any customer to
avoid going to this hell and they keep complaining about the work load and when
it came to ATM services they want to squeeze their customers.
Now, let's think from bank's perspective. There's huge
pressure from RBI and governing bodies for these banks to cut down their
operating cost and increase the productivity. In addition, they were asked to
modernize and introduce world class security as well! Caught in the act, what
they wanted to achieve was to squeeze the customer and make up for new expenses.
However, they don't bother to improve the quality of services as our country or
country men neither enforce nor demand that quality, respectively. There are
constructive models available and one of that was to build an independent ATM
network operated by a third party with all the facilities as per the security
norms prescribed by RBI. Thus the operating cost of these ATMs will be shared
by all the banks based on the customer usage of these banks. This was
successfully evolved in mobile tower network and similar logic is applicable
here as well. This would increase the number of the ATMs to include every bank
associated in this network. In this context the banks with existing ATMs can
lease out their existing property to this external agency so that they can recover their investment
over a period of time. Now, what I mean to say is instead of harassing the
lives of millions of common people, if we create an "All Bank Account Holders' Unity -
ABAHU" and join together to form a
pressure group and make such constructive proposal to the government & RBI,
it would be noticed/ listened. Remember, if few banks can come together and demand a
change in RBI policy of free ATM usage, why can't millions of customers do the
same muscle flexing in return?
